Chapter 5521: Fear and Doubt! I
Chapter 5521: Fear and Doubt! I
He floated in the trapped dark, split open, and he had never looked more like an Emperor.
The gash across his chest wept freely, and yet Noah’s body did not so much as sway! He hung in the storm with his crown gleaming and his shoulders level, dark bluish hair drifting in the pressure-winds of a Cenozoic enemy, and his blood...his blood did not fall.
It swirled!
Stellar crimson-blue-gold blood rose from his wound in slow, glorious ribbons, coiling around his figure like loyal serpents of burning light, each droplet threaded with Primeval Osmontian Cells that glimmered against the dark, and the sight of it silenced parts of the party that Lissana’s attack had been meant to embolden! For wounded things were supposed to diminish. Prey was supposed to shrink when cut!
And the crowned figure before them bled upward, wore his own blood as regalia, and gazed ahead with nothing on his face but calmness.
|You are facing tremendous adversity. THE Aura of THE Protagonist has been triggered, and it has been pouring since the space sealed. Twenty-one True Lifeforms and a burden-bearer whose existence is the strike, all arrayed against you alone. The Aura is drinking every drop of this impossibility. +100,000 Osmontian Biomass has been gained so far. The count climbs while you stand here.|
|You have been wounded by a malicious foreign authority. THE Primeval Osmontian Marrow has read the wound, and production of THE Primeval Osmontian Cells is accelerating. You are bleeding, and per its design, you will continue to bleed for these few seconds, deliberately, as the deeper condition engages.|
|THE Primeval Osmontian Berserker state has been triggered. Your existence now elevates the more injured you become. Production, accelerated. Healing, accelerated. Power, Intent, Output, all climbing in proportion to your wounds. She cut you to punctuate a command, Master. She has instead turned a key.|
...!
Prompts of majesty and wonder bloomed!
And his existence began to give off even grander waves of power! The fiendish ancient aura of the Marrow deepened around his bleeding frame, blue-gold pressure rolling out in slow tides that tasted older with every pulse, and the swirling ribbons of his blood burned brighter as the Berserker state fed on the very gash meant to humble him.
At this moment, three figures came to float beside him.
THE Creature drifted to his right, obsidian flames threaded with white-gold, his flat gaze fixed ahead. Anaximander settled at his left, robes drifting, unreadable.
And THE Infiniverse’s manifestation took her place at his shoulder, composed and cold-eyed even as her realms strained. All three of them stood against the pressure pressing from every direction, the Steed’s suppression grinding down on their weavings, Lissana’s sealed space coiled around them, twenty True Lifeforms arrayed beyond, and every one of them felt the strain, and not one of them showed it.
Yet even in such a precarious position, Noah seemed unbothered as he floated there and looked towards Lissana.
Him. Kneel?
He almost wanted to laugh! He literally could not do it even if he wanted to, as his very identity was that much against it. THE Unkneeling Crown was his First Foundation! No Ego hierarchy in existence could place him beneath it, and no command could bend knees that his own weavings refused to own! Her demand was not merely offensive. It was, for him specifically, structurally impossible!
So. How could he bullshit to gain more time?
He could always...keep talking.
And the more he withstood this adversity, the more Osmontian Biomass he gained from it! He had to do this, as there was very real danger here, danger that could end everything, and within him, THE Infiniverse had to be protected. Every second bought was a second closer to the hopeful thing racing across the dark!
So...
Noah, even while bleeding, gazed at Lissana and Ormarr and the others, and began to tell a story.
"In a certain dimension, there was a king who ruled over a wealthy valley, protected by a massive stone dam that held back the roaring sea. He was a proud man, convinced that because he was king, nothing he built could ever fail."
"..."
The party stared! A story? The bleeding fucker was telling them a story?!
"One morning, his chief architect rushed into the throne room, trembling with fear. ’My King,’ he cried, pointing out the window, ’look at the dam! A massive crack has split the center wall, and water is spraying into the air! We must evacuate!’"
Noah’s voice rolled on, calm and unhurried, his blood swirling grandly around him as he spoke.
"The king walked to the window and looked right at the spraying water. But his pride was a thick blindfold. He turned around, smiled, and said, ’Do not be foolish. I built that wall. It is perfect because it is mine. That is not a crack; it is just the morning sun playing tricks on your fearful eyes.’"
The stone hound’s ears had flattened. The three-faced female’s every face watched him now!
"The next day, the crack grew into a roaring chasm. Sea water rushed into the valley, flooding the palace gardens and sloshing across the throne room floor. The servants packed their bags and fled for the hills. Yet, the king just lifted his robes, stepped onto his golden chair, and looked away from the window. ’The gardeners have simply over-watered the lilies,’ he insisted to the empty room. ’The sea would never dare defy my kingdom.’"
His gaze drifted, slow and deliberate, across every listening face!
"An hour later, the dam completely shattered. A wall of black water smashed through the palace, tearing down the walls of stone and gold. The violent current swept the king away, stripping him of his crown and his heavy robes."
"He washed up alive on a barren, muddy shore miles down the coast. When he finally opened his eyes, he had no crown, no servants, and no subjects. His entire kingdom was gone, buried forever under the ocean he chose not to see."
...!
The moment he finished telling this story, Lissana coldly waved her hand again!
The space agreed with her a second time, and another gash tore open across Noah’s shoulder as blood erupted into the storm! And his figure...his figure shockingly became even more glorious! The fresh ribbons of stellar blood joined the coiling regalia around him as the Berserker state drank the new wound, his aura climbing another register, ancient and fiendish and rising, a being who was visibly, impossibly, growing grander with every cut she gave him.
|Adversity deepening. +47,000 Osmontian Biomass gained since the last report. The rate of production of THE Primeval Osmontian Cells has accelerated again with the second wound.|
Noah looked ahead through the swirling burning blood, and he could see it plainly now.
Hesitation. On all of them!
On Ormarr, whose coils had drawn tight around his own center! Hesitation on every face in the formation...except one. Lissana alone remained untouched, unread, unmoved, this being simply that unique, a blade that doubt could find no edge to settle on.
So Noah spoke to the ones it could.
"Cracks have began to appear for all of you, as the Dam is about to shatter." His voice carried through the sealed space, quiet and vast at once.
"I am the messenger telling you to save yourselves. While I may be weaker than you, what I represent is a raging sea that will sweep away everything about your existences. Heed my message. Turn away."
...!
And he simply floated there, bleeding gloriously!
The crowned figure hung wrapped in slow-turning ribbons of Primeval blood, wounds worn like decorations, ancient aura rolling off him in patient tides, gazing at a formation of apex beings with the serene disappointment of a king reviewing subjects who had arrived late, and not one being present could reconcile what their senses reported with what their eyes were seeing, and that irreconcilable gap was where fear lived.
But Lissana began to billow with terrifying power!
Her red robes lifted as her existence finally, truly, gathered itself, crimson light bleeding off her frame in blade-thin sheets that sliced the storm into ribbons, and her toneless voice came once more!
"I don’t need to kill one particular target." Her crimson eyes fixed on Noah alone. "But you...you can die..."
"Wait, Lissana..."
...!
It was Ormarr! Ormarr Grimtunge was actually the one to speak, his grand voice cracked through with open hesitation, the follower’s terror of blame at last outweighing the follower’s terror of his betters, and Noah looked on grandly as his seeds bloomed in the unlikeliest soil.
And within his own stillness, a memory rose.
The prophecy of Ryaenara’s brother. Ulf!
Three deaths must the deathless die before the door swings wide
The felt, the made, the borrowed self, each one must be united
Choose true, O brief and burning one, for choices carve the way
And what was written in the white was written from today
Three deaths. Would he truly need to die once, here, today?
He found himself questioning it, and he found, turning the question over, that he actually did not have any heavy emotions attached to it at all. To die was to be human.
And he had something that made it so he could return from death!
But he could not die so easily. Not here, not cheaply, not with THE Infiniverse in the balance!
He was about to turn his head at this moment toward the Steed itself, toward the dying colossus whose Causes were still listening, when Lissana raised her hand fully, the skies of the sealed space beginning to shake as a terrifying Intent howled awake, an edge the size of an era swinging back for its stroke!
At such a time...
"Aba, she is here!"
Seo-yeon’s voice rang out from within THE Infiniverse!
And in the next second...
BOOM!
Existence shuddered, fractured, and collapsed all at once as an unfathomably heavy aura descended!